QuotationsQuotations

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Renoir, whose paintings I don't much like,

Says what survives of the artist is the feeling he gives by means of objects.

I do like that, however,

The feeling put in as much as the feeling received

To make a work distinctive,

Though I'm not sure it's true,

or even it's workable.

------

When Chekov died, he died at dawn,

a large moth circling the lamp,

Beating its pressed wings.

Placed in a zinc casket, the corpse, labeled Fresh Oysters,

Was sent to Moscow in a freight car from Germany.

His last words were, Has the sailor left?,

I am dying, Ich sterbe.

------

My breath is corrupt, my days are extinct, the graves are ready for me

Job says. They change the night into day--

The light is short because of darkness ...

I have said to corruption,

thou art my father, to the worm,

Thou art my mother and my sister--

They shall go down to the bars of the pit,

when our rest together is in the dust.

------

That's all. There's nothing left after that.

As Meng Chiao says,

For a while the dust weighs lightly on my cloak.

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